Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Monday, September 19, 2005

For anybody who thinks official government/NGO etc promises are in any way to be trusted:

PRISTINA (Serbia and Montenegro), September 19 (SeeNews) - The business environment of the U.N.-run southern Serbian province of Kosovo is ranking among the most friendly in Eastern Europe in a study based on the World Bank's Doing Business Index, the U.S. office in Pristina said on Monday.

The study was prepared by the Kosovo-based economic research company Integra under the direction of the Kosovo Cluster and Business Support (KSCB) project, which is financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. office said in a statement.

"This report will encourage much needed foreign investment by educating the global markets as to the true nature of Kosovo's business environment. It also gives policymakers and business interest groups better intelligence as to where they should focus their efforts for future improvements," the USAID's Kosovo mission director, Ken Yamashita, said in the statement.

The World Bank's doing business index ranks 155 economies worldwide. The report tracks a set of regulatory indicators related to business startup, operation, trade, payment of taxes, and closure by measuring the time and cost associated with various government requirements.

Kosovo, legally part of Serbia and Montenegro, was put under U.N. administration in 1999 following NATO bombings on Serbia to halt Serb repression of the ethnic Albanian majority in the province.

Meanwhile stodgy old business men continue to be put off by the way different factions of the KLA government keep killing, disappearing each other, democratic Albanians, critical westerners & anybody who might be able to run the electricity etc etc.

These are the sort of people who keep reporting that global warming, passive smoking, AIDS, medium level radioactivity are genuine threats. I believe the extent to which such politically controlled international bodies are willing to ignore or subvert facts is a serious world problem.